26 April 2012

Making Money from your Food Blog

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex...

...It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."

Albert Einstein

Do you wish that your blog made money? Monetizing your blog is known as pro-blogging.

Conferences that claim to teach you how to do this are an increasingly common money spinner. It reminds me of Pyramid schemes. Make money by teaching others to teach the same thing. Follow the hashtag streams from some of these events via twitter
and it is evident that they’re not saying anything new or mind blowing.

So here
are my genuine tips. For free.

In life, if you want to make money, you either become an
employee or you start an enterprise. Deriving income from a blog needs to be
approached in the same way as beginning an enterprise. There are some blogs
that have evolved seemingly naturally from being a hobby to an enterprise but
they have a few things in common:

·The blogger was filling a popular yet unexplored
niche

·They put in very long hours to achieve it

·They made sure they stood out from the crowd

·They are very credible and well researched

·They were good at self promotion beyond the blog

Early in my career I was fortunate to have mentors and in
return, I do the same for others, including assisting with business planning
and helping my clients to stay on goal. I also help with self promotion and personal
branding.

Some of this knowledge is what you need to build a blog that is a
commercial enterprise.

In any enterprise my golden rule is “It’s not about you”.
Every business services a customer. Therefore it is all about the customer’s
needs and their point of view, not yours. This must permeate every decision you
make.

Planning

The first step for anyone considering starting out is the
business plan.

Set your goals – what are you aiming to achieve?
What amount of income do you realistically expect to achieve in the long term?

Set your exit strategy – when you have achieved
your goals what will you do next, sell out, merge with another or evolve to
another level? In some cases the exit activity is to become a Blooker (to self
publish a book based on your blog or secure a contract from a publisher)

Define your focus – every business needs a
specific focus. Every commercial blog needs a set theme. To have too many
themes in a blog will not serve those who could monetise it. To stand out you
also need to discover and fill a unique niche. If your blog does not offer a
point of difference it becomes just one in the crowd

Define the personality of your brand, ie. The
look, the style of writing or ‘The Voice’ you use to communicate. Imagine your
brand as a person, not necessarily yourself, in order to be objective about how
it comes across to others

Identify your typical reader, what they want to
read, find out how frequently they read blogs and how they discover them in the
first place, find out what else they read and what social networks they use.
Knowing this will ensure your content always has meaning and value for the
reader

Select a revenue stream by looking at how you
can monetise your blog. This may come via eCommerce, subscription services, syndication,
advertising or writing for brands and other websites. Decide what your fees
will be, create a rate card of what you will charge. Use a system that measures
your online influence/reach so that you can quantify your fees

Create a marketing strategy, no blog is going to
attract readers or income in isolation so publicity is very important

Create a calendar of activity for posts,
marketing, advertising and publicity. This not only keeps you on track but is
invaluable for showing investors or advertisers that you mean business

Cost out in man hours and dollars what it will
take to set up and to acquire the tools to achieve a high readership and
interaction with followers. You may find that you need professional help in
some areas which could require a financial loan or venture capital

Ascertain whether you have
the time and commitment to see it through, based on examining the previous
steps of discovery

In this process, Step Ten can be
the biggest hurdle of all. Many enterprises fail early on because they haven’t
bothered to go through the groundwork of the business plan. Working on a plan
can save you a lot of disappointment.

Remember that your plan is not cast in
stone. Your blog can, and will, evolve organically, but make sure you take time
to revisit that plan periodically to see if you are still on track.

Revenue

Probably the hardest question in
a business plan for bloggers is determining Step Six, identifying a revenue
stream. The answer usually will stem from the kind of niche you aim to fill.

ADS

There is the obvious such as
advertising on your site, placing Google, FoodBuzz or Nuffnang ads etc, but this will not
earn you a great deal. Another consideration is that the CMS of your blog needs
to be flexible enough to allocate adequate real estate to ads while still
maintaining easy navigation. If viewing is hampered by ads you will surely lose
readers.

SUBSCRIBERS

There is already a successful
commercial model in subscription services. Essentially the blogger offers their
site as a paid advertorial space, with notification of updates distributed via
a subscription email service. This model makes money from advertising and from
commissioned advertorial posts.

The reason the email subscription is involved
is to assist in establishing who your readers are and demonstrating your reach
online, by quantifying return on investment for Advertisers spending money on
your blog. If you have associated social media accounts also with a large
following or reach, this can further bump up your fees but you will need to be
using an effective monitoring engine in order to measure the reach of your
influence.

Some Pro-Bloggers are also
charging readers a subscription fee. But as per the experience of newspapers
moving into paywall territory, this model will impact on the numbers of
readers. If you follow this path, the quality of your content ought to be
professional magazine standard, and your site should not appear amateur in
structure. There should be a pay-off for subscribers such as access to
exclusive or premium events and non syndicated material.

PAID CONTENT

For Bloggers whose focus is
solely reviewing, a potential revenue stream can come from aligning yourself
with a cluster of PR agencies. By negotiating an annual retainer from the agency,
you agree to place product reviews on your blog. This can be for products, services,
events or venue reviews.

First you must do your homework and look at the PR
agencies and especially what their client list is like. Only approach agencies
where there is synergy between your point of focus and their clients. By law
you must also state if your posts are sponsored or advertorial.

Another alternative is if you already have a large following on your blog, you may be able to bring your klout to a brand by writing paid content for online journals and branded websites. The aim is that you will drive traffic to these other sites in exchange for payment and a backlink to your blog.

E-COMMERCE

In the cooking niche, you may have
hard goods that you wish to sell. There are many e-commerce solutions available
for your blog, as well as offsite, such as selling via Facebook or eBay. Small
businesses are able to tap into a younger market and regional markets, where
customers have the desire to find unique items outside of usual business hours.

Appeal to their desire for convenience, offer good customer service and follow
up on your sales to maintain cordial contact without the hard sell. This will
increase your chances of repeat purchases and grow your reputation. If you’re
involved in food selling, be mindful of the law, for example in OH&S,
permits, licenses, transport and other handling regulations.

This is just a handful of
examples of deriving revenue from food blogs. In all instances of the above, by
law you must make it clear to readers if a post on your blog is sponsored or can
be considered to be an advertorial. Of course there are also the usual business
finance details to manage such as having an ABN, tax implications including
charging GST. That’s best discussed with your Accountant.

Getting Known

Self promotion is the other major
stumbling block for new businesses. After all, marketing and self promotion is
a specialty area. The basic premise is utilising your personal brand for
reputation building.

An analogy I use with my own
clients is ‘wallflowers don’t get invited to dance’. Don’t expect to get
discovered without any effort when there are billions of blogs online.

PERSONAL BRANDING

The first step is to write a
short bio that introduces you. Use it as an opportunity to share your
credentials and build trust. Next create a photo avatar or brandmark that
people will associate with your personal brand. Create an email address just
for that brand.

PUBLICITY

Publicity is super important –
you need to let as many people as you can know that you exist online. Use
personal networks, social networks and press releases. Build a profile on
LinkedIn that will show your credentials. Join and participate in relevant LinkedIn
professional groups, from Food Writing to Blogging.

BEING SOCIAL

It is also important to interact
with fans through your comments section and social media. Chat is vital, as
opposed to just broadcasting a link to your latest post. It is also vital to
comment on other blogs. Use genuine interaction and contribution in your
comments. Resorting to sock-puppetry is taboo and can destroy your reputation. Link
farming isn’t as important as it used to be but it can be helpful to appear on
blog directories and lists.

GUEST POSTS

Guest posting is important. This
is either via inviting other popular bloggers to post on your site or to submit
a post to another site, community or blog with a very large readership. It’s
basically all about discovery. Submit pieces to traditional media - you may not
be paid, but if your content is used, request a byline and a backlink to your
blog. Also comment on traditional media stories that have relevance to your
blog and always include a backlink to your own site.

CONNECT

If you use multiple social media
accounts ensure that your avatar and bio, as well as the tone of voice, are
consistent across all of them. Make it easy for readers to follow your other
social accounts by adding social media buttons to your blog and always add
share buttons so that you content can easily be distributed by your readers to
a wider audience. Facebook plug-ins are also a great way to get your content
noticed around the web.

CONTENT AGGREGATORS

If you are a food venue review
blogger, you can publicise yourself by having a presence on social platforms
that specialise in reviews, beyond the obvious Urbanspoon and Foodspotting
sites, consider travel review and booking platforms, Local Area Marketing sites
such as TruLocal, Restaurant booking platforms and geo-spatial social platforms
such as Yelp and LinkedIn.

Non-review food blogs or product
review food blogs should consider submitting posts to Food aggregators such as
Tasteologie, Foodgawker and Tastespotting. Also consider having a photo
offshoot on Pinterest if it is relevent to your subject matter.

Remember to maintain the same
avatar and bio wherever you post on social networks so as to be recognised. In
this way you are not only discovered by more people, you also build your
reputation.

The Gristle

My character ‘Sticky of Deep Dish
Dreams’ - aka Stickifingers - has been a great way to engage with other food
lovers. One of the best aspects is meeting people offline, some of whom read my internet
musings and a few have become firm friends. Blogging is a great hobby.

Over time I have achieved a wide
reach of influence by using multiple social channels, including Tumblr, Twitter,
Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, Tripadvisor and LinkedIn to name a few, and am regularly
asked by commercial interests why I don’t monetise this blog.

The answer is
that I already have a career in Social Media Strategy that keeps me on my toes
with its daily changing processes, etiquette and platforms. To monetise a blog
is to create another career path. And I prefer to use what I know, to get others on
a happier path.

So if can leave you with one
thing to chew over, if you aim to monetize your food blog, to achieve success
it will cease to be a hobby and become a job that requires a great deal of concerted
effort.

Do you have the courage to take that step? Only you can know.

If you wish to check my credentials or to discuss professional matters, you can reach me at this link.

Please note that press releases and promotional material sent to me therewill be treated as spam in accordance to Australian legislation, as per the statement in the sidebar on this blog.

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About Me

Once upon a time on the fringe of a growing city of armchair Gastronauts, the wind swept a free spirit into the kitchen of a little house by the sea. And curious about her philosophical musings it stayed to watch the world through her eyes, carrying her dreams on the breeze to the far corners of the world.